D&D 5E WotC's Jeremy Crawford on D&D Races Going Forward

On Twitter, Jeremy Crawford discussed the treatment of orcs, Vistani, drow and others in D&D, and how WotC plans to treat the idea of 'race' in D&D going forward. In recent products (Eberron and Wildemount), the mandatory evil alignment was dropped from orcs, as was the Intelligence penalty.

@ThinkingDM Look at the treatment orcs received in Eberron and Exandria. Dropped the Intelligence debuff and the evil alignment, with a more acceptable narrative. It's a start, but there's a fair argument for gutting the entire race system.

The orcs of Eberron and Wildemount reflect where our hearts are and indicate where we’re heading.

@vorpaldicepress I hate to be "that guy", but what about Drow, Vistani, and the other troublesome races and cultures in Forgotten Realms (like the Gur, another Roma-inspired race)? Things don't change over night, but are these on the radar?

The drow, Vistani, and many other folk in the game are on our radar. The same spirit that motivated our portrayal of orcs in Eberron is animating our work on all these peoples.

@MileyMan1066 Good. These problems need to be addressed. The variant features UA could have a sequel that includes notes that could rectify some of the problems and help move 5e in a better direction.

Addressing these issues is vital to us. Eberron and Wildemount are the first of multiple books that will face these issues head on and will do so from multiple angles.

@mbriddell I'm happy to hear that you are taking a serious look at this. Do you feel that you can achieve this within the context of Forgotten Realms, given how establised that world's lore is, or would you need to establish a new setting to do this?

Thankfully, the core setting of D&D is the multiverse, with its multitude of worlds. We can tell so many different stories, with different perspectives, in each world. And when we return to a world like FR, stories can evolve. In short, even the older worlds can improve.

@SlyFlourish I could see gnolls being treated differently in other worlds, particularly when they’re a playable race. The idea that they’re spawned hyenas who fed on demon-touched rotten meat feels like they’re in a different class than drow, orcs, goblins and the like. Same with minotaurs.

Internally, we feel that the gnolls in the MM are mistyped. Given their story, they should be fiends, not humanoids. In contrast, the gnolls of Eberron are humanoids, a people with moral and cultural expansiveness.

@MikeyMan1066 I agree. Any creature with the Humanoid type should have the full capacity to be any alignmnet, i.e., they should have free will and souls. Gnolls... the way they are described, do not. Having them be minor demons would clear a lot of this up.

You just described our team's perspective exactly.

As a side-note, the term 'race' is starting to fall out of favor in tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder has "ancestry", and other games use terms like "heritage"); while he doesn't comment on that specifically, he doesn't use the word 'race' and instead refers to 'folks' and 'peoples'.

 

[Charlaquin]

But then that's just saying that people that belong to religion X are evil. I'm just not sure that's any better, especially given current world events.

There are unifying ideologies that are not religious in nature if that bothers you. But yeah, I would absolutely say it’s better, because religious beliefs are not an essential part of one’s nature. Is it a perfect solution? No. But I’d say it’s a step in the right direction.

That, and at a certain point I don't see a purpose for orcs if they're just another human-with-slightly-different-packaging.

This idea that if orcs (or whatever group) aren’t by nature tied to an alignment, they’re “just another human-with-slightly-different-packaging” comes up a lot in these discussions, and no one has been able to explain to me where this association comes from? Why must a sapient being have an inherent alignment to be sufficiently distinguished from humans in your view?

It's funny, I think Succubi being evil is worse in many ways because of the misogynistic roots of females that actually want to have sex are only out to corrupt your soul thing.

I think that is a different issue. Not to say that succubi don’t have misogynistic roots, they certainly do. But that’s not the same sort of problem as the evil races thing. To invoke the it’s not about the orcs idea again... The issues with succubi are about the succubi.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I had an epiphany last night, not sure if this take is lukewarm or flaming hot:

It's not about the orcs.

The issues people are pointing out about D&D's treatment of race aren't about the orcs themselves. Or any other race that's being thrown in the "problematic" bin. Sure, those portrayals have questionable stuff in and of themselves, but that's the smaller problem.

The bigger problem is that these "monstrous" and "exotic" races are being used in the narrative role of the indigenous population that is being pushed out by a settler/colonizer population (usually humans, elves, sometimes dwarves). There is a narrative of the "common races" taming the frontier and expanding civilization, which is seen a "good" thing, while pushing the people who were already there, usually "monstrous races" like orcs and goblinoids, to the fringes of society. I will admit that this is less of a thing in 5e, which is part of the game's general move away from AD&D's humanocentrism, but that trope hasn't completely gone away. Probably won't go away until the playstyle of dungeon delving into abandoned ruins of a bygone or displaced culture and taking their stuff for fun and profit goes away.

So we have one group of people cast in the role of the "cowboys" off doing cowboy stuff, and another group of people playing the part of the "Indians" that get in their way. Not literally of course, and substitute in any settler/indigenous duo you prefer. In a morally neutral framing of this dynamic, you'd expect that both groups open dialogue with each other, try and stay out of each other's way, and for the "cowboys" to respect the fact that the "Indians" were here first and have more claim to the land, and thus not do anything to offend their gracious hosts. Certainly not do stuff like shooting up a whole herd of buffalo and then leaving them to rot.

Problem is, the narrative framing of D&D twists over itself to justify the "cowboys" as being in the right, no matter what they do, while telling the "Indians" that they need to GTFO. The writers of that narrative make in-universe excuses for that framing, painting the "Indians" as "inherently evil", "savage", "backwards", etc. Make stories of the "Indians" attacking the lands of "good folks" and making off with their crops and coin, before the heroic "cowboys" roll into town and save the day. As much sense as it might make within the fictional universe, in the real world, it's still being used as a carte blanche for the "cowboys" to do whatever whenever. It's being used to create a setup for a "clean colonialism", where a settler population is given absolute, unconditional moral justification for pushing out an indigenous population in ways that in real life we'd condemn as horrific atrocities.

To reiterate in case it wasn't clear, "cowboys" and "Indians" is being used as a framing device. I'm not trying to make a 1-1 equating of D&D's common races with Old West ranchhands and frontiersmen and the monstrous races with the American Indigenous peoples. You could swap any situation, real or fictional, where an indigenous population comes into conflict with a technologically superior settler population, go with James Cameron's Avatar if you like, I dunno.

But in the end, it's not about the orcs. Or about the humans that they're fighting against. They're all actors in a stage play, and it's the play and its playwright that are the root of the problem. And the problem is that "this game is encouraging play that echoes racist colonialist narratives, wittingly or unwittingly". Substitute in any race/species/people as the actors in both roles, but if the story remains the same, then there still is a problem.

Completely agree here. The issue isn't that there are monstrous races, it's that too often because D&D's starting assumption is "Fantasy Europe" the monsters are drawing cultural ideas from everything "Not-Fantasy Europe." Which can mean drawing from Africa, Indigenous communities, Asia, and the Middle East.

Consider for example the hobgoblin (and this is 5E art), clearly drawing upon Japanese samurai with both the design of armor and the haircut. It's a great design, but also not great when hobgoblins are usually assumed to be evil, militant conquerors.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think people are spotting racism where there is none, which is hardly surprising in the current american climate. When everyone on the news and on the streets is talking about racism, people might end up seeing it where they never saw it before.
The satanic panic became a witch hunt. I hope the "racism panic" won't.

I have exactly the opposite opinion. I think some form of racism, sexism or homophobia is in most of us with few exceptions. The problem is that half of us are incapable or unwilling to admit it (hence the easy irritation of many whenever the topic is mentioned) and the other half is apologising or proud of it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Consider for example the hobgoblin (and this is 5E art), clearly drawing upon Japanese samurai with both the design of armor and the haircut. It's a great design, but also not great when hobgoblins are usually assumed to be evil, militant conquerors.

Okay, but like, given Japan went on an a spree of being militant conquerors in the late 1800s and up until the end of WW2, maybe it's not that bad? Japanese-Americans do face a lot of prejudice (less so elsewhere I think)

Would it be perhaps cooler if he was a quasi-knight, or a quasi-conquistador or the like? Yeah probably. And normally Hobgoblins now are quasi-Roman, which is perfect, but I think it could be a lot worse.

The issue, I suppose, is more that they're going for "exotic" and putting it on a badguy race. Especially as the "Roman Hobgoblin" thing is so well-established at this point.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I have exactly the opposite opinion. I think some form of racism, sexism or homophobia is in most of us with few exceptions. The problem is that half of us are incapable or unwilling to admit it (hence the easy irritation of many whenever the topic is mentioned) and the other half is apologising or proud of it.

I could not agree more.

 

[Warpiglet]

Ok I gotta ask.

So the hobgoblin has presumably western weapons. I dunno. Maybe not. But armor more similar to a samurai.

It does not look like any known cultural group or none of us would sleep at night! It has a hairy hide and blue nose maybe brick red skin and jagged teeth.

So this depiction of a hobgoblin might have some samurai armor where 90% of depictions of other humanoids is largely of a European style.

So then what is the significance of this one evil creature wearing that armor?

(I hear what you are saying about shaman). But surely you are not saying that not even one of 20 monsters should wear any armor tied with any cultural group aside from Europeans.

I am actually clarifying here. The shamanism I follow. This, I don’t.



[

This post is about explicit associations between evil humanoids in D&D and real world peoples - the hobgoblin art in 1e AD&D, and the concepts of shamans and witch doctors.

The 1e AD&D Monster Manual hobgoblin is depicted wearing the armour of a Japanese warrior.

View attachment 122953


"Tribal spell casters are found amongst the following races of creatures: bugbears, cavemen, ettins, giants, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizard men, ogres, orcs, troglodytes, and trolls. These spell casters are divided into two types, shamans and witch doctors." - 1e AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979).

How might Gary Gygax have understood shamanism? He cites the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica in a bibliography in Unearthed Arcana (1985). This is from its entry on shamanism: "the name commonly given to the religion of the Ural-Altaic peoples. Properly speaking however, there is nothing to distinguish Shamanism from the religions of other peoples in a similar stage of culture."

Shamans that appear in the works of Robert E Howard include the African N’Longa, ally of Solomon Kane, N’Yaga, one of Bêlit’s dark-skinned crew, and the Pict, Zogar Sag.

"Witch doctor" normally describes a practitioner of African traditional medicine and magic. Examples that might have been familiar to Gygax include the villainous Gagool in King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and Rabba Kega in Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919). The movie White Witch Doctor (1953) is set in the Belgian Congo. The witch doctor was a common trope in 20th century fiction, featuring in the Addams Family for example.

In 5e D&D the word shaman appears nowhere in the Player's Handbook but several times in the Monster Manual. Stone giants, lizardfolk, and quaggoths have shamans. These monsters are all either neutral or chaotic neutral so this can be regarded as a positive development, though shamanism is still associated with monsters and not PCs.

QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 8014453, member: 21169"]
This post is about explicit associations between evil humanoids in D&D and real world peoples - the hobgoblin art in 1e AD&D, and the concepts of shamans and witch doctors.

The 1e AD&D Monster Manual hobgoblin is depicted wearing the armour of a Japanese warrior.

View attachment 122953


"Tribal spell casters are found amongst the following races of creatures: bugbears, cavemen, ettins, giants, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizard men, ogres, orcs, troglodytes, and trolls. These spell casters are divided into two types, shamans and witch doctors." - 1e AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979).

How might Gary Gygax have understood shamanism? He cites the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica in a bibliography in Unearthed Arcana (1985). This is from its entry on shamanism: "the name commonly given to the religion of the Ural-Altaic peoples. Properly speaking however, there is nothing to distinguish Shamanism from the religions of other peoples in a similar stage of culture."

Shamans that appear in the works of Robert E Howard include the African N’Longa, ally of Solomon Kane, N’Yaga, one of Bêlit’s dark-skinned crew, and the Pict, Zogar Sag.

"Witch doctor" normally describes a practitioner of African traditional medicine and magic. Examples that might have been familiar to Gygax include the villainous Gagool in King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and Rabba Kega in Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919). The movie White Witch Doctor (1953) is set in the Belgian Congo. The witch doctor was a common trope in 20th century fiction, featuring in the Addams Family for example.

In 5e D&D the word shaman appears nowhere in the Player's Handbook but several times in the Monster Manual. Stone giants, lizardfolk, and quaggoths have shamans. These monsters are all either neutral or chaotic neutral so this can be regarded as a positive development, though shamanism is still associated with monsters and not PCs.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I personally barely ever use orcs as villains. I would have nothing wrong with making the base orcs neither good nor bad.

I don't have anything wrong with this. Anyone that does, please say why.

 

[Morrus]

If my stake wasn't clear - please no racism projection into my RPG game.

The only reason you can say that is because you’re a white guy who’s game isn’t affect by racism against you.

If D&D made a clear analogy for white middle-aged ‘Americans’ an evil, stupid race, I bet suddenly thousands of people would suddenly reverse their opinion.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not convinced orcs are an analogy for black people. But it’s your logic I’m discussing here. White middle class hobbits are good, right? You’ll probably claim no. But I submit that would be an unusual claim.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The justification in D&D for using violence against villains is almost invariably because they pose a threat to the PCs or to allies who the PCs are protecting.

Is that true, do you think? I think it's true in a lot of games, but I don't think it's "almost invariable" to the degree you say, and historically, it sometimes has outright not been true, or given limited appearance of being true, or more commonly, the supposed justification is quite hard to link up to the actual situation.

Very often I've seen adventures written where there's some room full of "evil" humanoids, and there's no particular explanation as to what they've done wrong, or are going to do, and they're not the focus of the adventure, but there's a clear expectation on the part of the adventure designer that you will boot in the door and kill them.

To be fair, sometimes this is done with humans (almost never with other demihuman races, oddly), where there are just some dudes sitting around waiting to get killed, but they'll usually at least have a direct link to the baddy, and be wearing his colours, and so on. I feel like this is kind of a subtle point, but often with "evil" humanoids there's no effort at justification beyond them being "evil humanoids", it's like assumed that we'll want to kill them.

 

[Helldritch]

Consider for example the hobgoblin (and this is 5E art), clearly drawing upon Japanese samurai with both the design of armor and the haircut. It's a great design, but also not great when hobgoblins are usually assumed to be evil, militant conquerors.

View attachment 122955

You do know about the "similar problem, similar solution" approach don't you? Getting inspired, or having a similar design and function is not being automaticaly related to the one that you got your inspiration from or that have found a similar solution to your own. The same goes for fashion and style. Bell is the acknowledge inventor of the telephone, but he was not alone. Antonio Meucci had the same solution but was too late to the patent...

In here, hobgoblins are in armor and dress style similar to japaneese. But so are the Samurai and Kensai and Bushi of the Kara-Tur and Kozakura sections of the Realms. You see a racist conotation? I see a theft of style. Clothes Designers do this all the time. I see nothing wrong in that. From copying a style to assuming hobgoblins are a representation that all japaneese are evil by this association... this is a huge step that I will not and refuse to take.